jim jividen: 16 Team MLB Simulation League-Team 1: 19th Century

16 Team MLB Simulation League-Team 1: 19th Century

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

In the early 90s I invented a table top baseball game; I bought some 20 sided dice, put together some playing cards for all time franchise teams based on Total Baseball statistics, appropriated a board. It was fun; I made it through one season (Orioles/Dodgers made the World Series, I think LA won). This was all during law school and its fair to question if there was better use to be made of my time.

The internet sort of wiped out all that stuff.

Until now, as I'm putting the band back together. No more dice, a random number generator allows me to create player cards with a range of 1-1000. And the statistics are better, a combination of baseball-reference and Davenport Translations to produce sixteen all time 25 man rosters. I broke it down by decade; there's some competitive balance considerations in determining where to roster players, but I think I did a good job (some of the teams are intentionally not as competitive, you'll see that as I unveil the rosters) My plan is to play a season (ideally several seasons, it's designed with legs; if it works out this is a permanent addition) but it will be awhile before I've finished creating all the playing cards (there's math) so I don't have an ETA.

Every team has 16 position players and 9 pitchers. All 8 positions have a backup; one of those backups will serve as a DH, as pitchers won't bat in this league. Every team needs a lefty bench bat and a lefty bullpen arm. I've also chosen a coaching staff.

Here's the 19th Century team, the numbers are each players position rank (meaning, Ewing is the 9th best catcher of all time)

Starters:
9. C Buck Ewing
4. 1B Cap Anson
24. 2B Hardy Richardson
10. SS George Davis (Switch)
23. 3B John McGraw (LH)
8. LF Ed Delahanty
10. CF Billy Hamillton (LH)
16. RF Elmer Flick (LH)

Reserves:
14. C King Kelly
7. 1B Roger Connor (LH) (DH)
26. 2B Bid McPhee
17. SS Jack Glasscock
27. 3B Deacon White
22. LF Jim O'Rourke
39. CF Paul Hines
17. RF Sam Crawford (LH)